It has been a great experience to be here today. People meet without love, because a situation calls for it. At that time you lose the human factor as you can’t speak about real things as there is no real communication. People who see me meditating feel I am too religious. So my question is how to deal with this prejudice and how to engage people and keep up the spirit of love and communication?
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: Yes! You know twenty years ago there was so much more prejudice. And thirty years ago when I started Art of Living there was even more prejudice. People thought meditation, this must be somebody crazy. Someone who is not proper in their mind only will do it; it was not for normal people. Yoga means standing on their nail, it is not for normal people, this was the idea. Today if you see the advertisements of Daimler Chrysler or many of those top business advertisements, you will find relaxation; people sitting in lotus posture, in yoga postures. HSBC banks you will see relaxation, they will show meditation, yoga. So today the language has changed and the prejudice has gone down a great deal. It’s not the same as before.
Then you know, there are some people who would resist anything that are different. So we need to keep communicating. I didn’t leave spreading or traveling what I have been doing all these thirty years, otherwise I should have left it long back. I would have said why should I go if there is prejudice and sit back in your own place where there is so much work to do, no! We have to continue doing our work.
Now, how do we keep that inner Norwegian spirit of love that we all experienced now? Continue having celebrations and continuing to have multi- cultural events more often. And then keep talking to people; communicate with people.
That is why I say you don’t need disaster to unite us. Anyways in disasters we unite but even in pleasant times also we can unite and that is what I call celebration; dialogue. So we should continue having this! I am all for it, okay.